Students Don’t Get Enough Sleep and Their Academics Suffer Because Of It

A staggering 70 percent of college students do not get enough sleep, according to the National Institutes of Health, and students at this university are no exception.

Nora Shepps, a freshman computer science and physics major, said her sleep pattern is highly irregular. Shepps said some nights she doesn’t sleep at all, while other nights she will be able to sleep 10 hours.

“I’m tired all the time,” she said.

For Shepps, she said her lack of sleep is due to poor time management.

“It’s mostly just because I like procrastinate a lot and like don’t feel like doing work so I stay up late to do it,” Shepps said.

Julia Soh, a sophomore criminology major, said she gets anywhere between five to nine hours a night, and if she skips class that day, it can be about 10 hours. Soh said her irregular sleep pattern conflicts with her academic performance.

“I don’t remember words or like what I did the past week. Things like that definitely affect my memory and my emotions,” she said.

A 2014 study done by the National Institutes of Health found that a lack of sleep can impact students’ performance in school and their memory. The study also found that sleep can improve academic performance.

The Health Center could not provide an expert for comment. However, they provide students with a 16 point handout on how to get a better night’s sleep. They recommend tactics like exercising, a consistent bedtime and avoiding alcohol before going to sleep.

Students like Justin Bartz, a freshman physics major who said he gets about six hours of sleep a night, believes the school can do more to help students get more sleep.

“A little less work would help,” Bartz said.

Soh also said she believes the problem resides in the workload professors assign.

“I think if teachers were more aware of the fact that we’re not only taking their class,” Soh said. “I think they’re all very,‘My class first,’ but I think that’s very unfair.”